Groupon vs. Living Social- Who is winning?

This is another interesting competition and one that I feel is going to get only more interesting as larger players like Facebook and Google get involved in the game.

The question came to my mind as I was sitting our south Seattle area web design office and was reviewing the many emails that had accumulated in my inbox in a few short hours, since I’d last been up and working.

Lo and behold, my morning Groupon offering was sitting there, with an attractive offer of $32 worth of food and drink at a local bar and grill, for $15. What made this so interesting was that this bar and grill name seemed very familiar to my wife. Sure enough, she’d seen the same bar and grill featured on Living Social the day before, with a price of $15 for $30 worth of food. And since these promotions run for a couple of days, the Living Social one was still being offered.

Living Social, not such a cupcake?

Now I don’t know the mechanics behind these deals, or whether or not Groupon went out and got the promotion simply to infuriate Living Social users everywhere, but it is certainly enough for my wife and most of her friends to reconsider purchasing anything on Living Social. IF Groupon is just to going offer better deals the next day on the same offerings, then why would you want to buy from Living Social at all?

I don’t own shares in either company, but Coalition Technologies is working on developing some similar ecommerce websites that have more specialized offering, so the little tit for tat caught my attention.

Groupon one ups Living Social deals

We’ll be keeping a close eye on these things, as we do with every aspect web development and how the online economy is changing. Knowing the area in which your business operates is one of the things that makes us a better partner for web design or for search engine optimization, especially if you are in Los Angeles or in the Puget Sound.